Jaded
by Istalindar
Summary: A one-shot which takes place after Draco and Hermione have been together and broken up. Angsty, although all's well in the end - kind of.


This is just a one-shot I thought of when I was watching the music video for Aerosmith's Jaded ~(hence the title). A lot of it is the video put down in words, but I didn't mean any infringement or whatever, I just thought it was a cool idea for a story and so I wrote it. I hope you like it - Istalindar  
  
Hermione stared out the window blindly. It seemed she did a lot of staring nowadays. It was the summer between sixth and seventh year, and she was perpetually bored, not that she was ever anything but.  
  
The windows were ridiculously big, just like the rest of her room. The windows went from the floor to near the ceiling, and the ceiling was high and domed, like the great hall at Hogwarts. There were paintings on the ceiling, old-fashioned paintings, back from when the house was a country retreat for the wealthy in Elizabethan times.  
  
The house was still for the ridiculously wealthy, although it was a permanent residence rather than a retreat. Hermione's family had inherited a vast amount of money from a distant relative who had been fond of David Granger, and now the grangers were among the wealthiest people in England. Hermione, when researching this merely for curiosity's sakes, found that the Grangers were as wealthy, if not more, as the Malfoys.  
  
Malfoys. The name made Hermione want to cry, except that she had no tears left. There had been that altogether too brief crying spell, and Hermione had been empty and cold since. Draco had left because he said he couldn't trust her. That she had been hiding things from him.  
  
He was talking about the Granger's newfound wealth, although from that first squabble sprouted paranoia, Draco accusing her of cheating behind his back. She had taken it all, trying to be as reasonable as possible about it; after all, she hadn't told him that she had suddenly become an heiress to billions, and when his rather disgruntled father told Draco, Draco had felt betrayed by her secret.  
  
Hermione forcibly wrenched her thoughts away from the Malfoys. It was because of them she was miserable. No, that wasn't true. She was miserable because-  
  
A gaggle of servants pushed open the hardwood double doors to her huge hall- like bedroom, breaking into her thoughts. The room was filled with chatter, and Hermione simply got up from her position on the bed and walked away. She was trailed, as she nearly always was these days, by a maidservant and two bodyguards.  
  
"Stay." She ordered, turning to fix all three with her gaze. She then turned back and walked away, and heard the cat-like footsteps of one of the bodyguards following her anyway.  
  
Her parents only wanted the best for her, it was true. They spoiled her extravagantly, although it all meant nothing to her. She no longer took joy in the huge ancient library, in the miles of information at her fingertips. She was beginning to be smothered by the immensity of the house, the dedication of the staff.  
  
Her parents were away for the summer, leaving the house to herself. Had she had friends, she would have invited them round. But Harry and Ron had disapproved of her relationship with Draco, and the Golden Trio had become two as Hermione had refused to follow their advice. Now, with Hermione and Draco's relationship gone to pot, she refused to go crawling back to the two boys who had refused to see her point of view. So now she had a whole summer alone in a big house with nothing to do and no one to see.  
  
*&*  
  
That evening Hermione stood around the huge spa-like bathroom while the servants made a bath for her. She was perfectly capable of doing it herself, but the servants wouldn't let her, and she was so listless she couldn't be bothered. That was the case with most things. She hadn't done any homework, not that she particularly cared. However, there was the small issue of the Head Girl position she had received, and she still wasn't sure if she could do it, or if she would have tell Dumbledore she just wasn't up to it, and could he pass it on to someone who was more capable of it.  
  
The mirror in front of Hermione was fogging up, and the words she had written there last night were beginning to be visible again. She had been slightly more optimistic then: 'What do you truly want?' was slowly becoming visible, faded though it was. Hermione smirked at her reflection, which obediently copied the gesture.  
  
"What do I want?" She asked quietly. She wasn't in a good mood tonight. Normally she would say she wanted something as superficial as world peace, but tonight, the world could go and shove it where the sun don't shine for all she cared. Right now she didn't know what she wanted.  
  
"Miss Granger, your parents are back and asking to see you." Hermione frowned. They were meant to be gone for the whole summer, and unless Hermione had just spent three weeks staring at a mirror, they had returned early.  
  
"Darling!" Mrs Granger ran forward from her husband to kiss her reluctant daughter.  
  
"Mum." Hermione tried to sound as interested as possible, and had the creeping feeling she was failing miserably.  
  
"Dearest, we were in Italy, when I had the most wonderful thought. Why don't we have a big party for your seventeenth birthday?" Hermione inwardly sighed. Parties meant people. Parties meant her smiling and pretending she was having a blast.  
  
"I'm not sure..."  
  
"Oh, of course you are, darling! You could have any type you wanted! Even a masquerade!" Now that it was mentioned, that sounded like a great idea.  
  
"That's a good idea." Hermione agreed. "But...make it a surprise." Mrs Granger frowned momentarily. "Even though I know about it. Make the... arrangements a surprise, decorations, that kind of thing." Mrs Granger smiled brilliantly.  
  
"Wonderful. Oh, it will be fabulous!" Hermione smiled weakly. Sure. Whatever. If you say so. Hermione smiled and returned to her bedroom. Fabulous. This was just what she needed. A lavish seventeenth birthday party that she really couldn't be bothered with. But she had said yes. More fool her.  
  
*&*  
  
As much as Hermione stayed out of the way, she couldn't avoid hearing all the hubbub about her party. The rumours flying around the large house said that Mrs Granger had invited Hermione's entire year. Hermione was devoutly praying to a god she had denounced at age seven that that particular rumour was untrue.  
  
She really didn't want to run into certain people in her year. Really.  
  
Her dress arrived three days before the party. Hermione had at least been able to choose it. It was long and black, with the matching black mask that covered the upper half of her face. It was dotted with silver stars, but other than that, was fairly plain. The black dress had a tight satin bodice and a full skirt. Other than that, it was unadorned. Hermione had received a black pearl choker from her mother as an early birthday present to go with the dress, and elbow length black silk gloves. The only other piece adorning her would be the blue diamond Draco had given her. It was the only thing, Hermione liked to think, that kept her sane. It wasn't necessarily that Draco had given it to her, but when she looked at it and held it she felt calmer, more in control. Hermione planned on putting the blue diamond on a long chain then tucking it into the front of her dress. That way she'd have it with her, but it wouldn't be on show. The last thing she needed was Draco gloating that she couldn't get over him. She couldn't, but that wasn't the point.  
  
*&*  
  
The night of the party arrived in due time, and Hermione stood in front of her silver-edged full length mirror, staring. She had dismissed her servants some time ago, before she put the blue diamond on. She looked down at the sparkling jewel. It wasn't very big, only as big as her thumbnail, and was a deep, sparkling dark blue-black. Hermione sighed and tucked it in her bodice, and looked over herself critically.  
  
Even if she was a bitch to her ego, she still couldn't deny that she looked beautiful. Her hair lay in jumbled curls around her shoulders, and the top of her hair was laced through with jet and black pearls. Her mask covered her face from the nose up, and what was visible of her face was pale and flawless. Her neck and shoulders were bare, apart from the black pearl choker and the fine silver chain, which dipped into the black satin bodice. The bodice clung to her curves, tight around her torso. Then the layered black satin skirt spilled from her waist to pool around her feet. Hermione's hands were encased in black satin gloves that reached past her elbows.  
  
"Let's go, Hermione." She whispered. "It's only one night. And the whole point of a masquerade is that no one recognises you."  
  
Hermione left her room and made her way to the stairs, where she descended slowly. Looking over the crowd of guests, it seemed that Mrs Granger had invited all of seventh year Hogwarts. And hadn't taken no for an answer. Hermione could see Draco's white hair from where she stood, and could see the flaming red hair of the Weasleys. Since they wouldn't be here without brute force, Hermione assumed that that was what her mother had used. Mrs Granger could be very persuasive at times.  
  
Hermione wove her way through the party, stopping rarely to talk. In all honesty, she didn't want to be here. And she didn't want all these people to be here. She stopped by the refreshment table to get a drink.  
  
"You look lovely." Hermione started, and looked into the twinkling blue eyes of a blue-robed and masked man.  
  
"Thank you, sir." Hermione answered, smiling slightly at her headmaster. Had her mother invited everyone?  
  
"You don't seem very pleased to be here, though." Dumbledore continued.  
  
"My mother arranged this. I would have been content with a night in with a book and a drink." Hermione said with a shrug.  
  
"Ah. Yes. The persuasive Mrs Granger. She was most adamant that the staff come." Dumbledore said with a smile.  
  
"Persuasive isn't exactly the word I'd use to describe her." Hermione muttered.  
  
"Indeed. I shall leave you in peace, Miss Granger." Dumbledore moved off, and was soon replaced by, to Hermione's distaste, Draco Malfoy in black, and Pansy Parkinson in violent pink.  
  
"I can't believe she didn't come to her own party."  
  
"It's a masquerade, Pansy." Draco said tiredly. "You probably wouldn't recognise her. That's the whole point."  
  
"Oh, come on." Pansy exclaimed. "We're talking mudblood Granger here. She'd stick out like a sore thumb, despite her money."  
  
"Perhaps she didn't come to save you the bother of straining yourself by thinking up witty remarks." Hermione said quietly, turning to face them.  
  
"Well.... I..." Pansy spluttered. Hermione smiled slightly, and moved away. She hadn't wanted to give herself away: the whole point of having a masquerade was that she could attend without anyone noticing. And if Draco hadn't noticed, then he was more of a fool than he looked.  
  
She passed Harry and Ron, distinguishable even in their costumes. Ron wore dark blue, with a blue full-face mask with a sun in one corner and a moon in the other. Harry wore emerald green, with a simple green half-face mask.  
  
"Why doesn't she join the party?" Ron asked.  
  
"She probably has." Harry said flatly.  
  
"Why doesn't she talk to us then?" Ron continued.  
  
"Because we were assholes and she's a coward." Harry said. Hermione's eyes narrowed. Coward was not the word to describe her.  
  
*&*  
  
The party progressed, and many of the partiers got more and more drunk. Mrs Granger, in particular, was teetering on the edge of stone drunk, and Hermione had already cast spells on Mrs Granger's clothes to prevent any embarrassing incidents.  
  
It was a clear night outside, and the party soon spilled onto the extravagant lawns.  
  
"Hermione, darling! I told you it would be fabulous!" Mrs Granger gushed, grabbing hold of Hermione's arm dramatically. All who hadn't identified the silent Miss Granger turned to look at the small, delicate girl in black.  
  
"Thank you, mother." Hermione said quietly. "But I've got a headache, so I might retire." She firmly disengaged her arm from her mother's grasp, and disappeared into the house.  
  
*&*  
  
Draco quickly climbed the stairs, following the direction Hermione had gone. He had suspected that the girl in black had been Hermione ever since the moment he had seen her coming down the stairs. Her remark to Pansy had only solidified his suspicions.  
  
His journey led him to a large oak door, which he pushed open. He found himself, unsurprisingly, in a library.  
  
"Hermione?" He called. He noticed her black mask on a table near the door, and picked it up.  
  
"I'm back here." Her voice, echoing around the large, domed room, sounded flat and empty.  
  
Draco started walking towards the back of the library, but soon admitted to himself that he was lost.  
  
"Take the second left." Hermione's voice instructed. He did so. "Now turn right where the red book is sticking out."  
  
"That's a bookcase, Hermione."  
  
"It's an illusion". Her voice was devoid of the sarcasm that would normally have infused that particular observation. He took a deep breath, and walked through the illusion. He found himself in a long tunnel; the walls lined with shelves full of books. He followed the tunnel, and at the end found himself in a medium sized room with a high domed roof made of glass. The room was circular, and where there weren't bookshelves on the walls, there were mirrors. Several Draco's copied his every movement.  
  
"One of my ancestors was fairly eccentric." Hermione's voice came from the shadows, but with all the mirrors and the way her voice echoed, he couldn't tell which shadows. "He called this the Soul Room. He said under sky, surrounded by yourself, you could see into your soul."  
  
"Does it work?" Draco asked, looking around.  
  
"I don't know. I'm beginning to doubt I have a soul at all, so how would I see into it?" Hermione's voice was faintly mocking, although Draco got the distinct impression that none of her ridicule was directed at him.  
  
"Come out where I can see you." Hermione's laugh echoed throughout the room.  
  
"Are you sure you want to see me?" She asked. "I'm not who you remember."  
  
"Let me see you." Draco said stubbornly.  
  
"Very well."  
  
Hermione stepped out of the shadows, and Draco caught his breath. She was beyond beautiful, but her beauty was so cold it nearly froze the blood.  
  
"Many years ago, people used to believe a pact with the devil would bring beauty and freedom from the pain of life." Hermione said, walking across the mosaic marble floor to stand before him. He stood frozen, and for the first time in his life, he was terrified of the small woman in front of him with the empty eyes. She looked up at him  
  
"Are you the devil?" She asked. Draco stared down at her, stunned. Then he gently cupped her face with his hands, and lowered his mouth to hers.  
  
Above them, fireworks from the party exploded, their shimmering streamers of coloured lights falling to the earth. But the two inside the Soul Room were oblivious.  
  
Draco's hands slid down to Hermione's satin encased waist, even as her arms went around his neck, holding him to her. She wasn't going to let him go again.  
  
When he drew back for air, his steel-grey eyes searched her flat brown ones. "What happened?" He asked.  
  
"When I screamed for a devil to take away my feelings, he didn't come." Hermione turned from Draco, and walked to the far side of the room. "So I took away my own feelings."  
  
"But-"  
  
"It wasn't hard." Hermione continued. "Bit of this, bit of that. I always was top of Potions, after all. No matter how much Snape hated me."  
  
"Please tell me you didn't." Draco pleaded. Hermione looked at him, and his heart quailed. He wondered why he hadn't seen it before. The unearthly beauty. The flat eyes. The indifference from everything.  
  
All symptoms of drinking a mixture of belladonna and hemlock.  
  
All symptoms of drinking one of the most poisonous mixtures on the planet.  
  
Hermione returned from the shadows carrying a black glass goblet. It carried with it a sweet smell, and Draco's heart sank. Not only belladonna and hemlock, but sweet death as well.  
  
Sweet death was a herb that was almost instantaneously fatal, which made Draco wonder why Hermione was still alive. It had been near enough burned out of existence, because of its properties. It was called sweet death because of its smell, and of course, it's poison.  
  
"Why?" Draco asked. Hermione looked up at him.  
  
"Why what?"  
  
"Why are you doing this?"  
  
"Because it is a relief. Because it will end." Draco smacked the goblet out of her hand, and it shattered on the marble floor, the silver-grey liquid pooling on the ground.  
  
Hermione bent by the glass, then looked up at Draco. He was staring at the pendant on the chain that hung from her neck and had fallen out of her bodice. Then her grabbed Hermione by the shoulders, hauled her to her feet, and slammed her against one of the mirrors.  
  
"How could you do this?" He yelled, even as the glass from the mirror shattered and fell to the floor around their feet. Hermione's face was blank, even though the shattered glass pressing into her back must have hurt. "How?"  
  
"What are you talking about?" Hermione asked.  
  
"How can you kill yourself, wearing that necklace, knowing full well what it would do to me?" Draco yelled. Hermione looked confused.  
  
"It's none of your business. The necklace was a gift, for me to wear when I pleased, and anyway. You broke up with me. It was you that didn't care what it would do to me." Hermione snapped.  
  
"I cared. I cared too much. That's why I broke up with you." Draco said, lowering his voice. Hermione pushed away, past him. He stared in horror at her back, red with blood from the cuts given to her by the broken mirror. "Can't you feel it?" He asked, his voice small.  
  
"Feel what?" Hermione asked, turning back to him. He walked towards her, and touched her back with his fingertips. They came back brilliant red. He showed them to her, and she looked at them blankly.  
  
"The mirror cut you. Can't you feel it?" Draco asked again.  
  
"Belladonna and hemlock together numb the senses, Draco. All of them." Hermione said patiently. "I can't feel just about anything." Draco took her hand.  
  
"Can you feel this?" He asked, looking up at her. She shook her head. He ran his hands up her arms to her shoulders, and looked at her questioningly. She shook her head again. He took a step forward and kissed her, his hands sliding down her lax arms to link with hers, their fingers intertwining. Then he pulled back. "Could you feel that?" He asked, half scared of her answer.  
  
"Just." Hermione answered. Draco frowned. She was almost completely numb, and with the three poisons she was using numbness was usually one of the later stages.  
  
"How long have you been..."  
  
"Poisoning myself?" Hermione asked. She tugged experimentally on one of his hands, to see if he would let go. He didn't, his leather-gloved hand squeezing tighter on her silk gloved one. "Near enough three months now. It's nearly over."  
  
"I won't let you." Draco said stubbornly. Hermione rose onto her tiptoes and kissed the corner of his mouth. He followed her mouth until he captured her lips, trying to remind her what it was like to feel. She pulled back, her big brown eyes regarding Draco with something like amusement.  
  
"How do you propose to stop me?" She asked, her voice edged with bitterness. A tear slipped free of her eyes, and ran crystalline down her cheek. He repressed the urge to wipe it away, and just stared at her. Her eyes widened as she felt the tear, running down her nearly-numb face.  
  
"I'm crying." She whispered. "I haven't...I cant." Draco was immobile. Suddenly she tried to pull away, trying to break Draco's grip on her. He wrapped his arms around her waist, holding on tight as she thrashed in his arms. Finally, she stilled, sobbing in his arms, his shoulder already wet with tears long overdue. He kissed her head and shoulders, pressing his lips against her hair and skin, even though he knew she probably couldn't feel it.  
  
"I cant...I cant do this, Draco." She said into his shoulder. "It's too late. Even if I stopped the poison now, I'd die. There's too much in my bloodstream."  
  
"We will stop it, Hermione. I'm not going to let you die."  
  
"Draco, there's no cure for sweet death. You know that." Draco kissed her forehead, then pressed his forehead against hers, meeting her gaze. Her eyes were no longer flat and dead, just tentative, like they had been scared to come out from behind the flat shield that had protected them from the pain Hermione had gone through.  
  
"How about sweet life?" He half joked. Hermione smiled weakly, and then shook her head.  
  
"I'm sorry, Draco." She reached behind her neck to unclasp the necklace, but he stopped her. "You said you didn't want me to wear it when I died." She protested quietly, her hands falling to her sides. She walked back to the far side of the room, and he heard the quiet splash of liquid in a cup.  
  
"I lied." Draco said. "Are you..."  
  
She returned, carrying another black goblet. Again, the smell of sweet death pervaded his senses. "Hermione..."  
  
"Shh, my love." She whispered. He kissed her, hard and fast, then stepped back. She drank the contents of the goblet, and swayed, the goblet falling from her senseless hand and shattering among the remains of the first cup. Draco rushed forward and caught her, gently lowering her to the ground, careful of the shattered glass. She looked up at him from her place on the marble floor, her dark brown hair spread out on the white marble tile. She touched his cheek gently with her hand, but when he bent to kiss her, she turned her head away, "Don't kiss me. It still resides on my lips. Fare well, dear one." She smiled at him, pressed her fingers against his mouth, then closed her eyes.  
  
He kissed her forehead, and laid her hand on her stomach. Then he stood, and left the room, sealing the illusionary entrance. No one would find Hermione's body, and the timelessness of the soul room would keep her whole. That was, no doubt, why the soul room had been built. As a tomb for the pained. It had said as much on the wall behind the broken mirror.  
  
Draco swept down the halls, fighting back tears as he thought of Hermione's corpse lying on the floor of the Soul Room. There would be uproar, when she was found missing, but surely the woman who had lived without peace from friends, family, and school deserved a little peace in death?  
  
Draco stopped by the small ornamental lake on his way off the grounds, and looked back at the house. He could see, rising about the rest of the house, the high glass dome of the Soul Room. He turned his gaze away, looking at the dark red old roses. He picked one, heedless of the thorns that cut him, and he tossed it onto the lake. It floated for a moment, then disappeared under the dark water.  
  
"For Hermione." 


End file.
